Ebay Users Take Note

[ljudice]

As an occasional user of Ebay, I've found it a great place to sell things I don't need - as well as find hard to find or out of production stuff. Overall, I've been a happy user. Over the 6 years or so I've used it, I've had about 500 transactions (99.9% model railroad) and a 100% feedback rating. Last summer I had one "neutral" rating. I was not paid for an item until I left on a 3 day vacation and was zinged for "slow delivery" - when the item was sent out. If the buyer had read my "shipping info" they would have seen that I said I only mailed things on Saturdays - so I actually "beat" my own shipping promise. Nevertheless, I could have done better by a day, so I felt a neutral was fair.

Well as of yesterday, my 100% has gone to 98.4% in the "NEW" Ebay Feedback system. I am royally peeved - I personally think twice about any seller with less than 99.5% feedback, especially since I've managed to keep 100% even as a hobbyist.

What has happened is that neutrals NOW COUNT as a -1 - and your total feedback is derived from the last 12 months - not your account history. Who looks at the account history and the "detailed seller ratings" (mine are 4.8-4.9)? Probably almost no one.

My point is - a lot of model railroaders are probably in the same boat here - so if you do go to Ebay please check the detailed feedback ratings because they have "changed the rules".

Lou

[jmlaboda - RIP]

You really need to stop and consider... a customer can trash you for no good reason at all by giving you a bad feedback.  Don't let it get you down.  The rating is worthless to me but what the feedback says does matter.  A lot of good feedback in comparison to little neutral or bad feedback goes a long ways with most buyers and I know some sellers who have royally screwed customers who continue to sell (though I no longer buy from them).

One neutral shouldn't get you down.  A deserved bad feedback on the other hand should concern you, God forbid if it ever happens.

[3rdrail]

Yeah, eBay scared the s**t out of me last night. I logged into "My eBay" and found my total feedback had increased by 17 overnight! My first thought was "Now who the hell managed to log in as me and buy 17 items without my knowing it?" But, all the recent entries in feedback were for stuff I bought.

Only after much looking around did I find out what had been done. If I owned stock in eBay, I'd be selling it. Poor communication, changes for the sake of change and much for the worse. "The bloom is off the rose" IMHO.

[TiVoPrince]

Pendulum
is swinging out of control in order to appease buyers slammed by the 'leave me (positive) feedback first' sellers.  eBay feedback will never replace beerology or other useful trader feedbck sites.  Without a 'traders to watch' and moderators volunteering to act as referees it does not work and breaks down to anarchy.  ArsTechnica should have the Agora Classified hopping with thier recent sale...

[DKS]

If I owned stock in eBay, I'd be selling it. Poor communication, changes for the sake of change and much for the worse. "The bloom is off the rose" IMHO.

It's actually much worse. No two sources of information at eBay agree on how the feedback rating is calculated. According to the Help document (http://pages.ebay.com/help/feedback/feedback-scores.html):

A positive rating increases the Feedback Score by one point

A neutral rating leaves the Feedback Score the same

A negative rating decreases the Feedback Score by one point

In my case, for the last 12 months I've had 167 positives, 0 neutrals and 0 negatives. But when you click the link explaining the calculation, it claims I had only 90 positives for the last 12 months. I sampled several other users' ratings, and the numbers were equally screwy; for example, one fellow has 1655 positives, 9 neutrals and 4 negatives, yet eBay claims their 99% rating is based on 1176 positives, 8 neutrals and 4 negatives.

I'd say the left hand doesn't even know there's a right hand, in this case, and the right hand flunked math...

[Chris333]

I don't know where to start...

First you now get automatic invoices that will not combine shipping if you win 2 auctions. If you go to paypal to pay you cannot change the total for the shipping, it won't let you. The only way I can pay is to paypal as a non-ebay item.

I finally left negative feedback the last few weeks and I received one as well. It was all due to 63 cents for shipping. I won 2 items and they tried to charge me MORE than double regular shipping costs. They explained that the items were too heavy to ship together. So figgin' shipping each item separate would be cheaper.

Anyways after all that with the seller over shipping they sent me the wrong items.    So I left negative feedback because I'm not going to send items back and "try again" they left me negative feedback for complaining about shipping costs.

In the same week with a whole different auction a month had gone by with no items in the mail. 4 e-mails both private and through e-bay went un-answered. I was getting warning on e-bay that it had been so long I need to leave feedback soon. So I left negative for them... Guess what they e-mailed me about 1/2 hour later asking why I didn't pay yet. They also threw up 2 "alerts" for me on E-bay for not paying. I copied and pasted the whole paypal page showing I did pay a month ago to both him and e-bay.

Neither of these were MRR related items.

So out of 571 feedbacks received 1 is negative, my rating is now 98.7% down from 100% and I have 2 alerts. All for nothing that I did. People put many things up on ebay and then just go about their lives waiting for money to come in. There is some work involved, if you don't want to do it don't list items!!!!

[SquirrelHollow]

I don't want to hijack at all, but felt like adding one of my experiences in here.  It is somewhat related.
(I may have covered this before.  I can't remember.)

I bought a cell phone for a friend, from a dealer with a rating over 35000, and 99.9% positive.
All feedback comments were stellar.

Long story short...  It was a bait and switch scam.   In the long run, I got screwed, and it took over 90 days to get the $450 back. (that I had already repaid my friend)
As the ordeal was going on, I kept checking the seller's feedback.  Every day, there were negatives reflecting the exact experience I was going through.  The next day...  the feedback comments, and related auctions would be deleted.  Even a thorough search of the auction number would turn up 0 results.
I was so struck by the way this was working, I actually set an alarm to go off every hour; to check on this seller's feedback during a day off.  Over 75% of his auctions ended in comments similar to: "Seller is a #$!!# #$%#$% go#$#m @$@ son of a #$#$ scam artist".

When I finally got the PayPal transfer back in my account, I went immediately to My ebay to leave feedback.  The auction was deleted.  Absolutely no method for me to warn future victims...

When Ebay had to step in and settle a dispute, they would DELETE all evidence of the fact that the seller was a douche bag.

When I checked the seller out again in late 2007, he was still doing it with over 55000 feedback, and still a 99.9% positive ... 18 months after my experience. 

I won't touch the mega sellers any more.

I stick to smaller guys, and low dollar items; IF I even use eBay.

[tehachapifan]

I don't want to hijack at all, but felt like adding one of my experiences in here.  It is somewhat related.
(I may have covered this before.  I can't remember.)

I bought a cell phone for a friend, from a dealer with a rating over 35000, and 99.9% positive.
All feedback comments were stellar.

Long story short...  It was a bait and switch scam.   In the long run, I got screwed, and it took over 90 days to get the $450 back. (that I had already repaid my friend)
As the ordeal was going on, I kept checking the seller's feedback.  Every day, there were negatives reflecting the exact experience I was going through.  The next day...  the feedback comments, and related auctions would be deleted.  Even a thorough search of the auction number would turn up 0 results.
I was so struck by the way this was working, I actually set an alarm to go off every hour; to check on this seller's feedback during a day off.  Over 75% of his auctions ended in comments similar to: "Seller is a #$!!# #$%#$% go#$#m @$@ son of a #$#$ scam artist".

When I finally got the PayPal transfer back in my account, I went immediately to My ebay to leave feedback.  The auction was deleted.  Absolutely no method for me to warn future victims...

When Ebay had to step in and settle a dispute, they would DELETE all evidence of the fact that the seller was a douche bag.

When I checked the seller out again in late 2007, he was still doing it with over 55000 feedback, and still a 99.9% positive ... 18 months after my experience. 

I won't touch the mega sellers any more.

I stick to smaller guys, and low dollar items; IF I even use eBay.

How could this be? You're saying that this seller can screw multiple customers and still retain that kind of feedback record? Wouldn't eBay take some sort of action against a seller like this?

Russ

[MrKLUKE]

.

[ljudice]

Just to be sure you understand my point in posting was not to complain (although I guess I was complaining...)

But to point out that if you're used to going to Ebay and seeing lots of 100% and 99.9% feedback in Model Railroading, you may be surprised to see lower scores suddenly. And you need to look deeper in the feedback to see the whole story.

I'm not sure I would buy from myself now with this blasted 98.6% rating! 

BTW, it sure looks like Ebay is out to shed itself of most small sellers, or at least cover their risk and costs by making it incrementally more painful and expensive to use the site.

Lou

[up1950s]

I wish there was a way to focus on a click just the negative feedbacks instead of going through all the pages .

 I have bought from sellers with negative feedback . I go into the comments on both sides , I also look up the feedback of the complainers . Often I see that the complainers have a much worse feedback rating than the seller . A little time , a little judging of the events and persons , and then I decide the risk factor for me . I will not let some SOB cause me not to buy from a seller just because he leaves negative feedback . I hope others would realize this , and do the 15 minutes it takes or less to research instead of being led by the nose by a jerk . I have 100% with 714 buys , which means I am overdo for a jerk to screw me up any day now . They should give more space to write the complaint , or allow links so the whole bleeding story can be told .

[Chris333]

Forget where I saw it, but there was a program that you just typed in the sellers name and you could sort through all their feedback. I used it once or twice a long time ago.

[flight2000]

First you now get automatic invoices that will not combine shipping if you win 2 auctions. If you go to paypal to pay you cannot change the total for the shipping, it won't let you. The only way I can pay is to paypal as a non-ebay item.

Chris,
The auctions will combine IF the seller sets it up correctly when they list the auction.  Otherwise you have to play the waiting game and hope the seller sends a combined invoice.  I've had both in the past few weeks on multiple items and it can be frustrating.

The night eBay switched the feedback ratings, I found I had gone from 510 to 634.  I still can't figure out how that managed to happen since I know I haven't been that busy on eBay over the last 12 months.  :

Brian

[wm3798]

I went from 105 to 111.  I think it changed from number of feedback from individual members to total number of positive feedback.  Used to be if you got good feedback twice from the same guy it only counted once.

Lee

[DKS]

I went from 105 to 111.  I think it changed from number of feedback from individual members to total number of positive feedback.  Used to be if you got good feedback twice from the same guy it only counted once.

Apparently, feedback from the same buyer in the same week counts once, but if the same buyer buys again a week later, it counts again.

...members can affect each other's Feedback Score by only one point per week. Each member may affect your score by one point per transaction. However, to make sure that repeat Feedback is calculated in the Feedback Score, each transaction the member is leaving Feedback for must end in a separate week. For Feedback, eBay defines a week as Monday through Sunday, Pacific Time.

For example, a buyer wins an item on Tuesday, then receives it and gives the seller positive Feedback on Thursday. If the buyer wins another item that week with the same seller, the Feedback the buyer leaves will not count toward the seller's Feedback Score. But if the buyer wins another item the following Tuesday, the Feedback will count toward the seller's Feedback Score.

In other words:

If a buyer leaves one neutral rating and one positive rating, it will affect the Feedback Score by +1.

If a buyer leaves three negative ratings and one positive rating during the same week, the Feedback will affect the Feedback Score by -1.

Clear as mud, right?

First you now get automatic invoices that will not combine shipping if you win 2 auctions. If you go to paypal to pay you cannot change the total for the shipping, it won't let you. The only way I can pay is to paypal as a non-ebay item.

Chris,
The auctions will combine IF the seller sets it up correctly when they list the auction.

That's right. I have all of my auctions set up to combine shipping automatically. Works fine. Also, in PayPal, you can set a permission option so that users can or cannot change the total themselves.